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Apply. Hello

1:35

and welcome to another episode on

1:37

the new book's network. I'm one

1:39

of your hosts, Dr Miranda Melcher,

1:42

and I'm very pleased today to

1:44

be speaking with Dr Stephen Campbell

1:46

about his book titled Leonard Devinchy,

1:48

An Untraceable Life, published by Princeton

1:50

University Press in 2025. This book,

1:53

well, examines Leonardo Devinchy, how we

1:55

have thought... about Leonardo da Vinci,

1:57

the stories that have been told,

1:59

the basis on which those stories

2:01

have been told, and a more

2:04

critical perspective that we probably should

2:06

take to the many representations of

2:08

Leonardo da Vinci that we have

2:10

all throughout art, pop culture, science

2:13

and technology, I mean all sorts

2:15

of places in our daily life

2:17

today, and maybe we should be

2:19

a bit more critical about the

2:21

history behind it and that's exactly

2:24

what this book helps us do.

2:26

So Stephen, thank you so much

2:28

for joining me on the podcast

2:30

to tell us about your work.

2:32

My pleasure Miranda, thank you very

2:35

much for having me on. Would

2:37

you please start us off by

2:39

introducing yourself a little bit and

2:41

explain why you decided to write,

2:43

you know, add another book about

2:46

Leonardo da Vinci to the world?

2:48

Absolutely. So I'm Stephen Campbell and

2:50

I'm a professor in the history

2:52

of art at the Johns Hopkins

2:54

University in Baltimore. I did most

2:57

of my training as an art

2:59

historian in the United States, although

3:01

I'm from Ireland and a B.A.

3:03

from Trinity College Dublin. So as

3:06

an art historian specialising the Renaissance,

3:08

I have been teaching Leonardo da

3:10

Vinci. since the 1990s. And much

3:12

of how I got to learn

3:14

about Leonardo was, you know, basically

3:17

from the classroom and was based

3:19

driven by the curiosity of the

3:21

students who signed up for my

3:23

classes. So why do they come

3:25

to write yet another book about

3:28

Leonardo? You know, we've had 300

3:30

books on Leonardo da Vinci. produced,

3:32

you know, that I've appeared in

3:34

print since his coincantennial in 2019,

3:36

really because there was a serious

3:39

lack of materials that I could

3:41

give to my students in the

3:43

classroom. You know, there was, there's

3:45

some good short articles, but in

3:48

terms of, like, you know, a

3:50

book that would motivate discussion that

3:52

isn't completely technical, you know, either

3:54

with Leonardo's scientist or Leonardo's painter,

3:56

there wasn't so much to make

3:59

it use in the sense of,

4:01

you know, okay, facts, analysis, that's

4:03

one thing. But if you want

4:05

to get students to, like, really

4:07

respond to critically engage, I wanted

4:10

to provoke discussion, I wanted to

4:12

enliven the classroom. So that's one

4:14

reason. I suppose that I also

4:16

wanted to write a book on

4:18

Leonardo where I envisioned a reader

4:21

like myself, you know, somewhat from outside

4:23

the field, you know, I work on

4:25

Leonard as contemporaries, let me

4:27

just say, a book that

4:30

I would actually enjoy reading.

4:32

And finally, I suppose another reason

4:34

I took this on is

4:36

that as an art historian

4:38

working on Italy, I'm just

4:40

constantly being asked by colleagues

4:43

and friends and family from

4:45

my own verdict on what would

4:47

you call it the latest da

4:49

Vinci nine-day wonder, you know, what

4:51

do you think about that? the

4:53

Battle of Angiari might still be

4:55

on the wall of the salonated

4:58

Chimquijanto. You know, somebody said so

5:00

on the Washington Post two weeks

5:02

ago. What do you think? So

5:04

I try to kind of muster

5:06

all of these concerns, all these

5:08

like, you know, Leonardo illusions

5:10

and, you know, dissect them critically.

5:13

That's a very good summary of

5:15

what you're doing all throughout the

5:17

book. So thank you for that

5:19

introduction. Speaking then of these kind

5:21

of as you said nine day

5:23

wonders of various things happening with

5:26

Leonardo da Vinci still very much

5:28

a kind of present thing that

5:30

goes on, one of the ways

5:32

you encapsulate this in the book is the

5:34

term da Vinci worlds. What do you

5:36

mean by this? Yeah, so what I mean

5:38

by da Vinci worlds, I would say it's

5:41

this is about da Vinci branding.

5:43

It's about creating spectacles or

5:45

experiences. that might claim to

5:47

be educational and you know

5:50

hopefully they are on some

5:52

level but at the end of

5:54

the day they're for profits and

5:56

you know what are they catering

5:58

to they're catering to our cultural

6:00

obsessions with, you know, tech

6:02

entrepreneurism, which we project back

6:04

onto a person who lived

6:06

500 years ago, with warfare,

6:08

you know, things that explode,

6:10

like with deadly weapons, there's

6:12

always a heavy emphasis on

6:14

that, robots. neurobiology because we

6:16

like to think of Leonardo

6:18

as a brain scientist and

6:20

that you know that is

6:22

has some foundation and you

6:24

know how science explains all

6:26

the mysteries of the humanities

6:28

all the mysteries of creativity

6:31

and including phenomena like

6:33

the Renaissance and you know it's these

6:35

are for-profit spectacles, they're sort

6:38

of generated by private museums,

6:40

and I sort of would

6:42

question, you know, the applicability

6:44

of the term museum to

6:46

some of these enterprises, but

6:48

increasingly real museums, you know,

6:50

which are created in the

6:52

public interest, in the public

6:55

good, you know, a taxpayer's

6:57

expense, are reshaping themselves in

6:59

the same way. as you

7:01

know, immersive experiences where really

7:03

what I'll show is the

7:05

technology. I can go on. I mean, if

7:07

you like, it's a pretty useful

7:10

way of thinking about a lot

7:12

of things I think we encounter.

7:14

So, you know, it was recently

7:16

reported that here in the

7:18

US, at a place called

7:20

Pueblo, Colorado, they're creating a

7:22

Leonardo da Vinci Museum, or

7:24

a da Vinci museum. By

7:26

the way, Leonardo was never

7:28

called da Vinci until the

7:31

19th century. That was never,

7:33

that name was never applied

7:35

to him in the Renaissance.

7:37

That's just parenthetical. He might be

7:39

called Vinci, but never in da

7:41

Vinci. And so I like to

7:43

call him Vinci sometimes in the

7:46

classroom. So we have this promise

7:48

of a museum web low colorado,

7:50

which is going to be entirely

7:53

consistent ratikas of the paintings and

7:55

drawings and you know, gigantic reconstruct

7:58

reconstruct constructions. of his machine. This

8:00

is an approach that's been tried

8:02

before. And its justification is something

8:04

called steam, S-T-A-E-M, you know, hot

8:06

error. Well, actually, you know, science,

8:09

technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. It's

8:11

supposed to be an educational guide

8:13

to problem solving. So Steam is

8:15

a mantra of university administrators and

8:17

sort of managerial education gurus and

8:20

it's all about, you know, we

8:22

find a place for the humanities,

8:24

you know, history, culture, literature, art

8:26

by merging it, by immersing it

8:28

in scientific modes of explanation. So

8:31

it's seen as being, you know,

8:33

educationally progressive. I really worry about

8:35

the justification of the humanities by

8:37

its, you know, somehow kind of

8:39

making it subordinate to and translatable

8:42

to the terms of science. I

8:44

think this approach has a use

8:46

and certainly unmindful of the fact

8:48

that most of the students who

8:50

sign up to take courses with

8:53

me on Leonardo are, you know,

8:55

are STEM majors. They're science, technology,

8:57

engineering, and mathematics. But you know,

8:59

they know they have to shift

9:01

gears when they're in my classroom,

9:03

end up with things in other

9:06

ways. So, you know, an example

9:08

of what they cite as an

9:10

example of what they're doing. This

9:12

museum in Colorado is, you know,

9:14

an exhibition which toured the world

9:17

called Da Vinci Machines and Robotics,

9:19

you know, which has been in

9:21

Florida, it's been in Florence, it's

9:23

been in Australia. And one thing

9:25

you noticed first of all about

9:28

this this traveling exhibition devoted to

9:30

machines and robotics is the price

9:32

tag, you know, what what it

9:34

charges to get in. It's $22

9:36

in the US, it was $22

9:39

for adults at $18 for children.

9:41

So supposing you're bringing a family,

9:43

you know, multiple kids to an

9:45

exhibition like this. How inclusive really

9:47

is that? When you can go

9:50

to the National Gallery in Washington

9:52

and you can see a painting

9:54

by Leonardo da Vinci for free

9:56

and the same in London, you

9:58

know, where you can see the

10:00

amazing Brington House cartoon, you know,

10:03

completely public accessible. So, yeah, I

10:05

mean, I just, I suppose I

10:07

worry that we increasingly were living

10:09

in a culture of surrogacy. and

10:11

digital mediation. And of course, you

10:14

know, the real thing where it

10:16

seems like those who are bringing

10:18

educational productions of Leonardo exhibitions to

10:20

us are really worried that like

10:22

historical objects are just a little

10:25

bit boring. And so the dazzle

10:27

and the magic of technology is,

10:29

you know, is supposed to be

10:31

a way of being more inclusive.

10:33

And I wish that was not

10:36

the case. I think we need

10:38

to think of alternatives. Yeah, but

10:40

that definitely gives us a sense

10:42

of the types of things that

10:44

we're starting from in terms of

10:47

today. One thing that I think

10:49

is interesting about the book is

10:51

kind of it. If I was

10:53

to say Jubbs back and forth

10:55

in time, that makes it sound

10:57

like it's kind of not doing

11:00

anything on purpose, but it is.

11:02

There's these investigations of sort of

11:04

where we're at now and how

11:06

we got there. And one of

11:08

them that I wonder if we

11:11

can talk about in a bit

11:13

of detail is the last supper

11:15

in Milan, which today you have

11:17

to book tickets for and you

11:19

cue for a while and it's

11:22

this whole like regimented process to

11:24

see this iconic iconic thing. It's

11:26

always been famous. I mean, I

11:28

would say that when I was

11:30

growing up, when I was a

11:33

student in the 80s, and I

11:35

saw it for the first time,

11:37

it was already very famous. And

11:39

it was imposing the pipe despite

11:41

the fact that it looked like

11:44

a ruin. But at that time,

11:46

it was one of the, you

11:48

know, two or three most famous

11:50

works of art of all time.

11:52

Lisa and say

11:54

the Sistine Chapel.

11:57

I'm not sure

11:59

if it has

12:01

that status now.

12:04

You know, I think something like Picasso,

12:06

Gorenica might have displaced it, you

12:08

know, probably should have. Yeah.

12:13

It is in Leonardo's own lifetime.

12:16

It was definitely his most famous

12:18

work. If people were astonished

12:20

by it, just the quality

12:22

of the painting, the realization

12:24

of visual experience through Leonardo's

12:26

knowledge of optics, through his

12:28

manipulation of painting technology using

12:30

oil, just to, you know,

12:32

to, and then just the

12:34

scale. It's still a very

12:36

physically imposing thing. So it

12:39

was sensational. And the earliest

12:41

records of the painting that

12:43

celebrated also note that it

12:45

was disappearing, that Leonardo's

12:47

creation was literally running down

12:49

the wall. So

12:51

the celebration goes with,

12:53

you know, a sort

12:55

of note of regret,

12:57

of mourning that it is actually that

12:59

the work is disappearing. As

13:02

a result, it

13:04

was probably it

13:06

was heavily reproduced, you

13:08

know, in even in Leonardo's own

13:10

lifetime, with about half a dozen

13:12

full scale copies. And

13:15

as early as 1500, when the

13:17

paint was very dry, although if

13:19

it was ever dry, I'm not

13:21

so sure, we had prints circulating

13:23

after the last supper. So

13:26

definitely it was the touchstone

13:28

for Leonardo, although it's interesting

13:30

that later on by the

13:32

1800s, people were surprised people

13:34

traveling in Italy were surprised

13:36

to find that it still

13:38

existed. Because reports of its

13:40

ruin and its increasing

13:43

deterioration had sort

13:45

of, you know, contributed to its

13:47

eclipse. Alright,

13:49

so that's definitely something that's

13:52

had a compelling, I guess,

13:54

appeal to people for quite a

13:56

long time. What about Da Vinci

13:58

art? It's something that I think

14:00

quite often comes up in this

14:02

nine days wonder sort of thing

14:04

you know this has been discovered

14:06

or look at the price for

14:08

this clearly in a lot of

14:10

demand today but why I mean

14:12

it's he's been around for a long

14:15

time like why is it so

14:17

high today do you think I

14:19

think that pseudo da Vinci's like

14:21

early copies of his work that

14:23

wouldn't have gotten look in like

14:25

30 years ago are now

14:28

you know, becoming a field

14:30

day for speculative art

14:32

investment. And, you know,

14:35

our attention economy is really

14:37

stirred by, you know, the prospect

14:40

of, you know, further Salvador

14:42

Mundi type discoveries.

14:45

This, by the way, is the, probably

14:47

everybody knows this, but

14:50

this was a Leonardo

14:52

discovery. from about 20

14:55

years ago, which finally

14:57

sold about seven years

15:00

ago for a spectacular

15:02

450 million. And that

15:04

is the origin of

15:07

the da Vinci feeding

15:09

frenzy and why, you know,

15:11

da Vinci, all kinds of

15:13

da Vinci nonsense and trivia

15:16

makes the news, including, you

15:18

know, I found a Leonardo

15:20

in my attic. kinds of

15:23

claims which get media attention.

15:25

I have, you know, every

15:27

couple of months I get

15:30

an email from somebody showing

15:32

me a painting, which might

15:34

be a bad Leonardo copy,

15:36

very late Leonardo copy,

15:39

or something that is nothing

15:41

to do with Leonardo whatsoever,

15:44

and insisting they think it

15:46

must be by Da Vinci. So

15:48

I think it's about... It's about

15:50

money. No, it's about it's yeah,

15:52

it's like there's nothing else like

15:54

Leonardo in the art market, you

15:56

know, not even Picasso comes

15:59

close. Van Gogh. Van Gogh

16:01

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16:03

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to get started. potentially. But one

17:05

of the things that I think

17:08

goes back to what you were

17:10

saying earlier on, the kind of

17:12

tech entrepreneur side of what makes

17:15

Leonardo so enticing to people today,

17:17

one of the tags that comes

17:19

up in a lot of these

17:22

media articles is the idea of,

17:24

you know, he was ahead of

17:27

his time, right? As someone particularly

17:29

who studies his contemporaries, you have

17:31

a special perspective on that kind

17:34

of claim. What might you want

17:36

listeners to think about next time

17:38

someone says that about Leonardo? Well,

17:41

you know, maybe we don't know

17:43

as much about Leonardo's time as

17:45

we'd like to think. You know,

17:48

we're still engaged in a lot

17:50

of research about what it was

17:53

like to be a person who

17:55

made things to be an artisan

17:57

in the world of 14th century

18:00

Florence in Milan. This is an

18:02

ongoing field of research and it

18:04

still yields surprising results. There's a

18:07

lot of interest in the history

18:09

of technology about the... role of

18:12

artists' workshops and people who made

18:14

things in ceramic and precious metal.

18:16

And the very interesting crossover from

18:19

those makers into, you know, how

18:21

those makers then, you know, crossover

18:23

into becoming designers of bridges of,

18:26

you know, massive domes and cathedrals.

18:28

And, you know, other engineering problem

18:30

solving challenges. Leonardo is part of

18:33

a culture. He's part of a

18:35

broader sort of collective, a network

18:38

if you like, and they're, you

18:40

know, aware of each other's ideas.

18:42

Sometimes they're very protective about their

18:45

ideas. Sometimes they share them, you

18:47

know, selectively. Leonardo had two-hand several

18:49

records of inventions by inventors from

18:52

previous generations, artists who, you know,

18:54

made speculative designs, who invented, who

18:57

created who invented, who created, who

18:59

invented, who created, who created, who

19:01

created, who created, who created, who

19:04

created, who weapons, useful machinery, you

19:06

know, modes of transport, automata, underwater

19:08

breathing apparatus. All these things that

19:11

we think are original to Leonardo,

19:13

somebody else had come up with

19:15

them. So there's a historian called

19:18

Plinyo, you know, Gense. who wrote

19:20

a book a few years ago

19:23

called The Innovators Behind Leonardo, The

19:25

True Story, Scientific and Technological Renaissance.

19:27

So all that scholarship is available.

19:30

I would like people to do

19:32

sort of bear that in mind.

19:34

Now this is not to say

19:37

that Leonardo was sometimes very original

19:39

and that he introduced significant modifications

19:41

and improvements in when he copied.

19:44

and re-visualized the designs of others,

19:46

especially in the field of flights.

19:49

His research into flights is quite

19:51

exceptional and really interesting. So yeah,

19:53

I mean, sometimes you get the

19:56

sense almost that Leonardo is like

19:58

some kind of space man, you

20:00

know, who's traveled, you know, traveled

20:03

back from the 21st century into

20:05

the, into the 15th and is,

20:08

you know, making these sort of

20:10

like, you know, futuristic creations, which

20:12

lead, you know, in the middle

20:15

of a kind of a dark

20:17

ages, but you know, we're not

20:19

talking about a dark ages here.

20:22

We're talking of a very, very

20:24

technically literate culture. And yet despite

20:26

that, there are some... problems or

20:29

at least there's some challenges in

20:31

constructing a biography of Leonardo, despite

20:34

the fact that it's a very

20:36

literate error, there's a lot of

20:38

obstacles in putting something like that

20:41

together. What are they? I would

20:43

say the main problem is the

20:45

consensus biography of Leonardo, which is

20:48

largely made up and it needs

20:50

to be taken apart. There has

20:52

been a nonstop production of biographies

20:55

of Leonardo and they all tell

20:57

the same story. you know, about

21:00

this illegitimate gay outsider from Florence,

21:02

you know, who was traumatized by

21:04

being arrested for Sodomy at the

21:07

age of 24, and you know,

21:09

can't seem to settle down on

21:11

Florence, and maybe he has ADHD,

21:14

and he can seem to create

21:16

works of art. So it's almost

21:19

like, the problem, he's a fully

21:21

rounded character, and he's available to

21:23

anybody who wants to tell his

21:26

story. And I think that there

21:28

are some very good Leonardo biographies.

21:30

I think Charles Nichols, Leonardo, Flight

21:33

to the Mind, is a good

21:35

biography. But it needs to tell

21:37

a whole tale. It needs to

21:40

go to, you know, sort of

21:42

envision a wholeness to that life,

21:45

which the record does not really

21:47

support. So it imagines, it fills

21:49

in the gaps. I see my

21:52

job in this book as almost

21:54

like restoring... a painting, you know,

21:56

where I have to remove the

21:59

overpaint, the infills of later restore.

22:01

and I have to reveal the

22:04

patchy picture which is left to

22:06

us. Yeah, that definitely is a

22:08

historical problem. I think a lot

22:11

of us historians are used to

22:13

working with sources. We're not often

22:15

used to working with sources where

22:18

someone's made up a story and

22:20

we're going, hang on a second,

22:22

wait, wait. So thinking about this

22:25

made up story then, what are

22:27

the kind of troops of these

22:30

biographies and how do they play

22:32

into these wider questions that we've

22:34

been sort of hinting at around

22:37

sort of tech entrepreneur around genius

22:39

around science even around like what

22:41

a biography is? How do the

22:44

Leonardo fake stories of his life

22:46

play into all of this? Well,

22:48

you can take, so that's got

22:51

to do with the nature of

22:53

the literary record, where in one

22:56

sentence, Leonardo might be opening, you

22:58

know, a glimpse into some kind

23:00

of rich dimension, rich personal dimension.

23:03

And, you know, when he says,

23:05

I saw, or this happened to

23:07

me, I think one of the

23:10

major questions is, to what extent

23:12

can we actually take that literally?

23:15

Because when he speaks in the

23:17

first person about something that happened

23:19

to him, it's quite apparent that

23:22

he's speaking figuratively in a lot

23:24

of cases, and that he's reworking

23:26

something he found in a book.

23:29

You know, he's a richly read

23:31

person. So he talks about, for

23:33

instance, you know,

23:36

the famous story when I

23:38

was a child, a kite

23:40

came and sat on my

23:42

cradle and started striking my

23:44

mouth with its tail. And

23:46

this is why I became

23:48

a, you know, a rider

23:50

of, why I was destined

23:52

to investigate the mysteries of

23:54

flight. And Freud, of course,

23:56

seizes on that as a,

23:58

you know, as a instance

24:00

of Leonardo da Vinci psychosexual

24:02

neurosis, you know, although Floyd

24:04

told you he was writing

24:06

about a vulture. And here,

24:08

Leonardo is just making a

24:11

very clever adaptation of a

24:13

literary trope. And the trope, you

24:15

know, it's found, you know, it

24:17

poems in the Greek anthology, which

24:20

talk about the young Plato or

24:22

the young poets desiccaris. you know,

24:24

where nightingales, a light on their

24:27

lips. Leonardo had a life of

24:29

St. Ambrose of Milan in his

24:31

library, and in the life of

24:34

St. Ambrose, we find that the

24:36

young St. Ambrose was in his

24:39

cradle, was found to have bees

24:41

in his mouth, and in fact

24:43

honeycombs in his mouth, his mouth

24:45

was being used as a... Beehive,

24:48

and this was considered marvelous and

24:50

prophetic of the honeyed speech, the

24:52

persuasive rhetoric of St. Ambrose. When

24:54

Laneard writes about a kite, you

24:56

know, which is a rapture bird,

24:58

it's a commonplace kind of bird,

25:00

a scavenger bird, he's, you know,

25:03

he's inverting that trope, he's playing

25:05

with that trope. So this is

25:07

the things I, you know, I've,

25:09

you know, I've been following up

25:11

with, and I'm not alone, other

25:13

people have made similar observations. So

25:15

yeah, it's just that there are

25:17

these sort of false trails. He

25:20

doesn't mean them to be false,

25:22

but he's not presented them as

25:24

a autobiography. It would never have

25:26

occurred to Leonardo to write an

25:29

autobiography. That's not what artists

25:31

did. When artists like Diberti,

25:33

who is an important predecessor,

25:35

you know, a sort of

25:37

technological, you know, innovator, sculptor,

25:39

goldsmith, he did write, you

25:41

know, you know, lives of

25:43

artists including himself where he's

25:46

the grand climax of the

25:48

history of art. And he's

25:50

following classical models like Pliny

25:52

the Natural History which does

25:54

include short lives of artists,

25:56

but those lives there are

25:58

lists of achievements. and

26:00

descriptions of achievements. And

26:02

that doesn't seem to have

26:04

been interested in art

26:07

at all. It could be maybe

26:09

because his record of achievements is,

26:11

you know, a little sad. So few

26:13

of the works he projected

26:16

actually came to pass. But

26:18

yeah, artists' artisans weren't expected

26:20

to be people who, you

26:23

know, engaged in life writing. That's

26:25

definitely a different conception than we have

26:27

today of autobiography. But what about biography?

26:29

I mean, even if the artist wasn't

26:32

writing it themselves, like, are our ideas

26:34

now of what a biography is meant

26:36

to do? Different than in the past,

26:38

and has that, have there been kind

26:40

of Leonardo biographies that we call biographies,

26:43

but we're doing different things? Biographies were

26:45

meant to be exemplary. They're actually supposed

26:47

to make a point. Like if you

26:49

write the life of an artist. you

26:51

are supposed to be showing you know

26:54

what artists or what what a good

26:56

successful artist should do you know who

26:58

were the virtuous and accomplished artists who

27:01

should be role models for other artists

27:03

you know like the life of a

27:05

general you know here here are the

27:08

strong points in which you should be

27:10

imitated you're setting in you're setting a

27:12

biographical subject up as a model to

27:14

be imitated. And on the other hand,

27:17

here are some of his faults and

27:19

the things that, you know, he should

27:21

not do. Boccaccio, you know, wrote a

27:24

companion of lives of women and, you

27:26

know, famous women. And, you know, he

27:28

insinuates at the very beginning that for

27:30

a woman to be famous might not

27:33

be a good thing, because it's all

27:35

about, like, like, you know, reputation. and

27:37

for a woman to have a farmer,

27:40

you know, could also be, you know,

27:42

to have, you know, a less than,

27:44

you know, pristine kind of reputation. So,

27:47

yeah, you know, there's certainly

27:49

a culture of biography, but

27:51

it's, it is exemplary. And,

27:54

yeah, Leonardo, indeed, the

27:56

earliest lives of Leonardo, which

27:58

appear from the... 1520s on

28:00

are tend to emphasize failure.

28:02

Okay, that's interesting. You mentioned

28:05

earlier that maybe part of

28:07

the problem is that kind

28:09

of, it would be good

28:11

to have more sources on

28:13

this period generally and that

28:15

might help us kind of

28:17

assess what's going on here.

28:19

Was from the material we

28:21

do have, was Leonarder sort

28:23

of idiosyncratic in some of

28:26

his ideas such that it

28:28

makes it harder to fill

28:30

in? Like do we have

28:32

these biographical gaps and problems

28:34

creating a life story for

28:36

his contemporaries or is he

28:38

kind of particularly enigmatic? Is

28:40

he particularly enigmatic? It's, yes,

28:42

I think it's unusual in

28:44

that he almost never refers

28:46

to his own body. He

28:49

never refers to being ill.

28:51

Michelangelo, by contrast, talks about

28:53

illness, infirmity, melancholia, bad moods.

28:55

Leonor just never tells you

28:57

when he's in a bad

28:59

mood. You can sort of,

29:01

you know, maybe read that

29:03

into certain. It was a

29:05

very laconic, you know, descriptions

29:07

of things going wrong. But,

29:10

you know, sometimes, you know,

29:12

you would get, you know,

29:14

another example would be an

29:16

artist, a yoga artist who

29:18

knew him, Pontormo, did keep

29:20

a diary, but the diary,

29:22

it was almost like a

29:24

medical sort of regimen. It

29:26

describes what he eats. what

29:28

he eats and how his

29:30

eating habits, his diet relates

29:33

to his work performance, you

29:35

know, fairly, you know, visceral

29:37

kind of stuff about his

29:39

metabolism, which I won't go

29:41

into here. So there was

29:43

a rationale for that. It

29:45

was about sort of like,

29:47

you know, it was about

29:49

maintenance of health and, you

29:51

know, the connection between health

29:54

and sort of more general

29:56

spiritual welfare. No. None of

29:58

that in Leonardo. And I've

30:00

got some various theories on

30:02

that, which I... layout in

30:04

the book. But other idiosyncrasies

30:06

of Leonardo is in a

30:08

culture where, especially in Florence,

30:10

where you have artists who

30:12

do write, you have artists

30:14

who engage in the writing

30:17

of poetry, for instance, or

30:19

Leonardo constantly professes his hatred

30:21

of literature, is hatred of

30:23

poetry in particular, to an

30:25

astonishing degree. And despite the

30:27

fact that Leonardo reads Dante

30:29

and cites Dante, and the

30:31

only conclusion you should draw

30:33

from there is he sees

30:35

as Dante has been something

30:38

more than a poet. Dante

30:40

is more like an encyclopedia,

30:42

you know, because Dante is

30:44

expressing compendious wisdom in his

30:46

gigantic poem, The Comedia. And

30:48

here again, I mean, maybe

30:50

is this driven by the

30:52

fact he does not see

30:54

himself as being like Michelangelo,

30:56

his younger rival. You know,

30:58

Michelangelo is very famously styled

31:01

himself as a poet. And

31:03

with the poet, you do

31:05

get a confessional voice and,

31:07

you know, a drive to

31:09

express one's emotional and spiritual

31:11

states, essentially an inwardness and

31:13

a selfhood defined, you know,

31:15

in terms of an interior,

31:17

which is lacking in Leonardo.

31:21

Hmm. This is quite interesting. Do

31:23

you want to give us a

31:25

brief sketch of some of the

31:27

theories you have about why he

31:30

was so kind of had these

31:32

particular beliefs that were different from

31:34

his peers? I think at a

31:37

certain point, the fact that Leonardo

31:39

is somebody who works with his

31:41

hands, who works with his body,

31:43

you know, who is producing knowledge

31:46

through a kind of bodily encounter

31:48

with matter, you know, oil, oil

31:50

paints, clay, metal, etc. I think

31:53

because he wants recognition as an

31:55

author, he needs to rise above

31:57

the messy world of the workshop

31:59

and he needs to present himself

32:02

almost as a kind of disembodied

32:04

voice, almost as like an eye,

32:06

you know, separate from a body,

32:09

an eye that can see and

32:11

understand and know, right? Sure, he

32:13

talks about experience, but that experience

32:15

is observed, it's set down in

32:18

words and in drawings. And this

32:20

is because he wants recognition as

32:22

a book author, which is to

32:25

say something more like a humanist.

32:27

like his, somebody like Leon Battista

32:29

Alberty, who's a name that might

32:31

be familiar to some of this

32:34

audience, but who was like Leonardo

32:36

illegitimate, but was trained in Greek

32:38

and Latin. And, you know, so

32:41

he has a university education. So

32:43

he's a different status, a different

32:45

level of credibility in terms of

32:48

knowledge production. You know, Leonardo is

32:50

just an artisan. And despite his

32:52

astonishing, you know, ability to render,

32:54

for instance, the interior of the

32:57

human body, the structure of the

32:59

human body, like nobody else before

33:01

him. You know, decades later, you

33:04

have physicians in Milan, like a

33:06

cardinal, famous physician of Renaissance Milan,

33:08

saying that Leonardo, no, he's just

33:10

an artist, you know, the fact

33:13

that he's claiming to be something

33:15

else. we don't have to take

33:17

that seriously at all. So it's

33:20

very real. It is about the

33:22

hierarchies of knowledge production and Leonardo

33:24

needing to rhetorically extract himself from

33:26

the world of manual labour and

33:29

to speak as something more something

33:31

like a humanist, like a philosopher.

33:33

So I think philosopher is a

33:36

very very kind of wide and

33:38

inclusive paradigm, but it's one that

33:40

definitely has more respectability than artists.

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34:17

Hmm, that's helpful to understand. Obviously,

34:19

because conceptions of artists today are

34:21

quite different. But I wanted... I

34:24

want to talk about this manual

34:26

labour piece for a moment because

34:28

Leonardo's not kind of all by

34:30

himself doing things. There's a whole

34:33

workshop, there's a whole production, there's

34:35

a whole thing going on that's

34:37

pretty directly tied to him in

34:40

his work, even if that's not

34:42

how he's representing himself. Should we

34:44

be thinking of that as essentially

34:46

sort of modern, the kinds of

34:49

economic incentives today that have museums,

34:51

you know, art museums, have gift

34:53

shops of reproductions of whatever painting?

34:56

I don't think, okay, so workshop,

34:58

let me start with that. I

35:00

don't think there's anything essentially modern

35:02

about Leonardo having a workshop. He's,

35:05

we know very little about how

35:07

he organized it, right? So we

35:09

just know that there was some

35:12

kind of space. There are younger

35:14

artists, well artists actually at different

35:16

ages, who passed through his house,

35:19

some of who live in his

35:21

house. Some of whom might be

35:23

receiving training and some of whom

35:25

are just sharing facilities. It's very,

35:28

very not clear-cut, can I to

35:30

say, what the workshop would have

35:32

looked like. And, you know, I

35:35

would say that about workshops in

35:37

general. It's very, very fluid how

35:39

they are organized. And, you know,

35:41

we have a sense of Verocchio,

35:44

Leonardo's teacher, you know, with this

35:46

army of subordinates, with different skills,

35:48

different specializations. I don't think Leonardo

35:51

ever did anything like that. So,

35:53

it's a very contingent operation, a

35:55

very fluid operation. We have, but

35:57

every, almost every painting Leonardo makes,

36:00

we have replicas, you know, multiple

36:02

replicas. you know, towards your sort

36:04

of speak to your museum, gift

36:07

shop kind of thing. But it's

36:09

not unusual to produce replicas. There

36:11

are paintings by Leonardo's contemporaries, people

36:13

he knew, like Botticelli and Gilen

36:16

Dio, and there are paintings by

36:18

them that's, you know, we have

36:20

like a colossal number of replicas,

36:23

you know, like one or two

36:25

dozen. I mean, that's a lot

36:27

30, you know. they

36:29

were designed for mass reproduction.

36:31

In the case of Leonardo, it's

36:34

not quite clear whether the

36:36

reproductions were produced in his

36:38

workshop or whether other artists say,

36:40

you know, this is something

36:42

I should do as well,

36:44

and they somehow have access to

36:46

a Leonardo's works and are

36:48

able to copy and make

36:50

their make versions or replicas. I

36:53

suppose the main point is

36:55

that leading artists from Florence,

36:57

they understood that all of their

36:59

works are potentially go to

37:01

generate works like themselves. Okay,

37:03

that's helpful to understand that expectation.

37:06

Does that help us rethink

37:08

ideas of sort of Leonardo's

37:10

influence? You know, oh, this later

37:12

artist was influenced by Leonardo.

37:14

Do we need to sort

37:16

of rethink how we understand that

37:19

as well? Yeah, I have

37:21

some ideas. I mean, in

37:23

the later part of the book,

37:25

I lay out sort of

37:27

a sort of notion of,

37:29

well, how did, what is, what

37:31

is selfhood, you know, 500

37:33

years ago, what is a

37:35

pre-modern selfhood for somebody like who

37:38

is an artisan, in this

37:40

intensely collaborative networked world? And

37:42

I see the sort of, I

37:44

would sort of reconceptualize the

37:46

idea of Leonardo's influence as

37:48

being almost like a sort of

37:51

a composite personhood, a sort

37:53

of like distribution or extension

37:55

of Leonardo's own self. and his

37:57

pictorial method is very very

37:59

distinctive, you know, his use

38:01

of soft shadows produced through, you

38:03

know, his refinement of the

38:06

oil painting medium. It's also

38:08

one that's teachable, and it's also

38:10

one that like other artists

38:12

can pick up very easily.

38:14

So this, you know, this panombra

38:16

of artists around Leonardo working

38:18

in his style, you know,

38:20

possibly with his blessing, constitute, it's

38:23

sort of an effective community

38:25

who respond into Leonard's works

38:27

and their response to Leonard's works

38:29

is giving rise to them

38:31

to other works. The works are

38:34

psychologically very powerful. It's almost like

38:36

they are designed to, you

38:38

know, to make you want

38:40

to engage with them, engagement to

38:42

the point of, you know,

38:44

producing, you yourself, other images

38:46

that that resemble them. In some

38:49

ways that has interesting reflections

38:51

with what you were talking

38:53

about right at the beginning with

38:55

Da Vinci worlds and the

38:57

kind of reproduction of different

38:59

things for people to look out

39:02

and kind of variations on

39:04

a theme or influence in

39:06

these sorts of ways. Are there

39:08

alternatives to the current Da

39:10

Vinci worlds we can imagine?

39:12

I really believe in small exhibitions.

39:15

I believe we can do

39:17

a lot with exhibitions. I

39:19

think we need to support museums.

39:21

I also believe in sort

39:23

of public access and I

39:25

think we need more responsible and

39:27

less sensational approaches to Leonardo

39:29

da Vinci with technology. It's

39:31

a no-brainer that the Leonardo notebooks

39:34

and drawings should be available.

39:36

publicly available as a web resource.

39:38

And I think we're in a

39:41

better state than we were

39:43

even five years ago in

39:45

terms of museums and libraries. digitalizing

39:47

there are layenade manuscripts, but

39:49

we need more than that.

39:51

We need a network, we need

39:53

a consortium of museums and

39:55

libraries that hold these manuscripts.

39:57

And we need searchable digital reproductions

40:00

of layenardo. We need sort

40:02

of facsimile and we need

40:04

translations in various languages and we

40:06

need to be able to

40:08

search. And I'm often very

40:10

impressed with what my young students

40:13

are able to do with

40:15

what's available. They don't even

40:17

speak Italian, but they were able

40:19

to somehow like find consults

40:21

what resources do exist, which

40:23

is not a lot, online. And,

40:26

you know, they're guided mainly

40:28

by the illustrations or diagrams,

40:30

and then they figure out what

40:32

the page says and figure

40:34

out where they can get like

40:36

a translation, or the translation software

40:39

to figure it out from

40:41

themselves. Most, a lot of

40:43

the time, unfortunately, you know, a

40:45

museum or a library will

40:47

say we've digitalized, you know,

40:49

this code X by Leonardo, but

40:52

they won't actually tell you

40:54

what it says or what's

40:56

going on in every page, right?

40:58

So it's sort of limited

41:00

usefulness in a way. But

41:02

an area that could be improved,

41:04

perhaps, so who knows? I

41:06

think this is where we

41:08

need to go. Yes, that would

41:11

be much better than the,

41:13

you know, the techno spectacle

41:15

of dementia worlds. Well, we shall

41:17

see. And this is obviously

41:19

something that, as you mentioned,

41:21

is a topic you're quite interested

41:24

in, but also is something

41:26

of a departure from your

41:28

other work. So is there anything

41:30

you might be working on

41:32

now that this is done

41:34

that you want to give us

41:37

a brief sneak preview of?

41:39

All right. And this is a

41:41

very very sneaky preview preview. I

41:43

don't know. a biographical fiction,

41:45

which is explicitly a fiction.

41:47

It's called Vinci a fiction, and

41:50

it's a novel about Leonardo

41:52

as perceived. by a person

41:54

who knows him for the last

41:56

20 years of his life,

41:58

of Leonardo's life, and a

42:00

person who had to live for

42:03

50 years after Leonardo's death

42:05

with the burden of being,

42:07

in a way, Leonardo's executor, his

42:09

heir. And that's Jovan Francesco

42:11

Melci, who is a Milanese

42:13

aristocrat who somehow gets drawn into

42:15

the ambit of Leonardo. He

42:17

has Latin Greek, so he

42:19

could serve as a translator and

42:22

a secretary for Leonardo. as

42:24

well as possibly a link

42:26

with the Milanese ruling classes at

42:28

a time where they're sort

42:30

of being dispossessed by the

42:32

by the French under French occupation.

42:35

So young Melty learns how

42:37

to paint and when Leonardo dies,

42:39

Melty takes custody of all the

42:42

notebooks. and he seems to

42:44

have made an attempt to

42:46

gather Leonardo's notes and painting and

42:48

make a treatise, you know,

42:50

assemble the treatise and painting,

42:52

but what did he do with

42:54

all the other stuff? And

42:56

so I'm essentially trying to,

42:58

you know, imagine what it is

43:01

like for this young man

43:03

and what, you know, why

43:05

he becomes a painter in the

43:07

first place? And then, you

43:09

know, why did he sit

43:11

on this material for 50 years

43:14

after Leonardo dies? Those are

43:16

some intriguing questions and sounds

43:18

like an interesting exploration. So best

43:20

of luck with that secret

43:22

sneaky project. And of course

43:24

for listeners who want to get

43:26

into Leonardo questions in a

43:29

nonfiction sense, so with the

43:31

book we've been mainly discussing, it

43:33

is of course titled Leonardo

43:35

da Vinci, an untraceable life

43:37

published by Princeton University Press.